SOURCE: "Rights of Man and Its Aftermath," in The Politics of Language, 1791-1819, Clarendon Press, 1984, pp. 35-67.

In this chapter from her landmark book The Politics of Language, 1791-1819, Smith uses a close reading of Paine's word choice and grammar in order to establish the significance of his impact on language and political thought.

John Simple, speaking of his wife's stay-maker to Mr Worthy: 'He is one of the prettiest-spoken men in the world'.1

The publication of Rights of Man demonstrated that a language could be neither vulgar nor refined, neither primitive nor civilized. Such dichotomies of theory did not account for the possibility of an intellectual vernacular speaker, nor did literary values account for the possibility of an intellectual vernacular prose. Even a writer as bold and as experienced as Thomas Paine was somewhat constrained by conventions of language. Describing the reason for the interval between the...